A recent study published in the October 2009 issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology determined that variations of specific genetic markers identified in previous research, or SNPs, may indicate a greater lung cancer risk in African Americans than in whites. The genes CHRNA3 and CHRNA5 may contribute to lung cancer risk due directly or through their association with nicotine dependence. Although their presence is less frequent in African Americans, the risk for lung cancer may be greater when present.

Initial chemotherapy alone after surgery is just as successful as initial radiation therapy for patients from whom a very malignant brain tumor (anaplastic glioma) was removed. With this treatment, the patients survive on average > 30 months without a recurrence. A study conducted by the Neurooncology Working Group of the German Cancer Society led by researchers from Heidelberg and Zürich showed that patients in primary therapy benefit to the same extent from chemotherapy alone as from radiation alone.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Scripps Research Institute have uncovered the role played by the least-understood part of a first-responder molecule that rushes in to bind and repair breaks in DNA strands, a process that helps people avoid cancer.

An international team of scientists has discovered a new way to classify stomach cancers, and researchers say it may be an important step toward designing more effective treatments and improving long-term survival.

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers have put an end to a 10-year debate over which form of a molecular messenger called Fas ligand is responsible for killing cells during programmed cell death (also called apoptosis).

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of twelve centers announced today by President Obama as part of an unprecedented large-scale, collaborative effort by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to systematically characterize the genomic changes that occur in cancer.

Younger women with metastatic colorectal cancer lived longer than younger men. However, this survival advantage disappeared with age, suggesting a benefit from estrogen or other hormones, according to results of a study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) researchers are one step closer to finding new ways to treat Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), a bone marrow disease that strikes up to 15,000 people each year in the United States, and that sometimes results in acute myeloid leukemia. Researchers found that the gene RhoB is important to the disease's progression and could prove to be a therapeutic target for late-stage MDS.